Ah shit.

This is currently published in Status form on my Facebook, but it deserves a blog post too.

Dylan has been guzzling some truly awful vegan protein shakes in the morning. It's called Vega, and it's basically ground up vegetables, and it's disgusting. Eric drinks it, so Dylan wanted to have what Daddy was having. As a result, he now loves the stuff and consumes nearly an adult size serving every day. It makes his poo green and runny.

I think you can see where this is going.

We got home this afternoon from a weekend up at Horseshoe Valley for my Grampa's 85th birthday. It's a step down from the Caribbean cruise we all took for his 80th, but he's become much less able to travel in the past five years, so Horseshoe Valley was a good alternative. We were totally exhausted when we got home, and were planning to chill out and relax for the remainder of our Sunday.

Dylan started exhibiting cranky sleepy signals, so we ran his bath and started his bedtime routine. I was watching him in the bath when Eric came in to take over, and as I looked up to say something to him I heard a fart noise. I looked back at Dylan, saying "Baby, did you just fart?" Eric said "No, he pooped!" and we sprang into action.

Trailing behind Dylan in the tub were five small pieces of poo. Eric panicked and pulled him out of the tub. "He's still pooing! There's poo hanging from his bumhole!!" I shouted. Eric plunked Dylan on his feet on the floor, dripping wet in the cold air. The poo continued to come out, so Eric put his hand underneath to try to catch it. The poo overflowed and started to drizzle onto the floor. Eric gave up trying to catch the poo, and so it ran down Dylan's legs. It smelled terrible. As it started to pool on his little chubby feet, Dylan started to cry.

I leapt over both of them and ran to Dylan's room to get some wipes. I came back and Dylan was crying and holding out his arms, trying to climb onto Eric for comfort. Eric got poo on his shorts. We kept saying "It's okay, Dylan, it's okay!!" as we frantically tried to clean off his thighs and feet and bum. Eric finally whisked Dylan off to the stand-up shower in our ensuite, and left me in the room with poo all over the floor, poo-wipes everywhere, and a bathtub full of toys and five small pieces of poo.

It has not been a chill or relaxing Sunday evening.

Update of Randoms

What I Had For Lunch Today
I heated a small non-stick Green Pan. Then I took a can of sardines and - when the pan was hot - I dumped the contents of the entire can into it. I arranged the little fishies so that they rimmed the edge of the pan, with a couple crossing the middle of the ring. Then I cracked two eggs into the oily holes. I grabbed a big handful of organic baby spinach and tossed it on top of the eggs. Then I put the lid on the pan and waited for the whites to set. When the whites were cooked and the yolks still runny, I slid the sardine egg pie onto a plate and sprinkled sea salt on top. Then I broke the yolks and let them run all over the top of the pie, and then I ate it. Now I feel kind of sick because it was a lot of rich protein. I plan to now eat half a jar of olives.

I Now Love Olives
I've never liked olives. They taste weird, salty but somehow also sour and offensive. For some reason, a love of olives has snuck up on me and now it's like I can't live without them. Specifically, I love kalamata olives, preferably the organic kind I get at Planet Organic Market. They're less salty, I've had some kalamatas that are ridiculously salty and very difficult to eat. But last week I bought a jar of these organic olives to try, and they were so delicious I ate the whole jar in one day. The next day I went back and bought five more jars of olives, and now I'm down to my last jar. I also bought a jar of black olives to see if I would like those, and they're okay but not as good as the kalamata olives. I loves the Greeks and their olives.

Pellegrino Contains Crack
As an experiment, I quit drinking pop. It wasn't easy because Coke Zero used to be like my favourite thing ever. But now that I've finally realized how gross and awful aspartame is, and I can't go back to sugar pop because it tastes too sweet and makes my teeth feel fuzzy, I figured the only thing to do was quit drinking pop altogether.

Anytime I wanted a Coke Zero, I would instead pour myself a big cold glass of Pellegrino. I've liked sparkling water ever since we went on our honeymoon to Europe almost four years ago. I usually refrain from drinking it in quantity because it's expensive. We did a sparkling water taste-test years ago when we bought all the different kinds of sparkling water from the grocery store and tried them all. We loved Pellegrino, and we really didn't appreciate Perrier so much. Why does it explode like a goddamn grenade in your mouth?

After a couple months of not drinking pop, I was cleaning the kitchen and saw a lonely can of Coke Zero in the fridge. Cathy had been slowly finishing off my pop supply for me when she and Luke came over for our weekly TV night. I decided I had been so good with not drinking pop for so long that I deserved a treat. I cracked open that can of Coke Zero and took a long swig.

It was so gross. I'm sorry to all you people who still love pop, but it really tastes like strange dirty water that is vaguely sweet and has fizz. I HATED it. Wow, I thought to myself. This is so amazing. I don't have to be a slave to any food or beverage. If I can conquer Coke Zero, I can conquer anything!

Last week I ran out of Pellegrino and the world ended. I've been BESIDE myself, craving Pellegrino. I've been extremely irritable and desperate. I've picked fights with Eric for no reason, just because I was upset about not having Pellegrino. Last night I was such a bitch that after Eric had already bathed Dylan, he insisted that we go to the grocery store to get some. So we did. And now I'm better.

Bright Neon
Our chiropractor recommended that we take a bunch of vitamins. One of them is making our pee insanely bright neon yellow. I've never seen anything like it.

Pervert In Training
We taught Dylan to touch himself when we say the word "penis". It's pretty awesome, but also probably not the best thing in the world.

Ooh la la, oui oui!

Eric and I love Paris. It's our favourite city in the world, which I know makes us wildly unoriginal but we don't care. We love the food, all the buildings, the food, and all the food. We are especially obsessed with Laduree.

Laduree is a patisserie/restaurant, and they make lusciously decadent pastries and croissants. Chief among these is the MACARON. I can't tell you how much we love these almond biscuits sandwiching assorted fillings of jams and flavoured buttercreams. My favourite flavour is rose, and Eric's is pistachio. They are slightly crispy - but not unyielding - on the outside, soft and moist and chewy on the inside. The fillings are not too sweet, but bursting with spurty orgasmic flavour. Don't tell people, but one time we had sex using macarons as tasty lickables. Too much information? Yeah. What did you expect.

A typical day for us in Paris goes as follows:

- Wake up
- Go to Laduree to buy a large assortment of croissants and macarons
- Sit on random bench and eat croissants and macarons
- Go to a museum
- Sit on random bench and eat croissants and macarons
- Go somewhere awesome for lunch
- Sit on random bench and eat croissants and macarons
- Go to Laduree to restock on croissants and macarons
- Climb the Eiffel Tower
- Return to hotel to dress for dinner while snacking on croissants and macarons
- Go somewhere delicious and highly acclaimed for dinner
- Watch the Eiffel Tower light up at Trocadero
- Go back to hotel and take turns having showers. The person not showering eats macarons in bed.
- Do the sexy sex (I prefer doing it doggy-style in Paris because any macaron crumbs that are still on the bed from snacking, I can lick up while Eric takes care of business)
- Sleep

Eric's mom and sister just got back from a trip to Paris. I had prepared a list of things they should eat there, and the top of that list was of course Laduree. But I'll skip to the end, because it's the best part:

They brought Laduree macarons back for us!!

They are only good for 2 or 3 days, so they were very anxious to see us right away. I shrieked with uncontainable glee and almost crapped my pants when they pulled the familiar pale green box out of their goody bag.

Eric and I just sat across from each other at the dining table after putting Dylan to bed and taking showers. We ate each and every single one. We wept. And now, since I've cut out sugar to lose weight and my body isn't used to having sugar in it anymore, my heart is racing and I feel very dizzy. But I don't care.

I love you, Paris.

I love you, macarons.

How long has it been since a poo post?

I can't remember how long it's been. Anyway, here is one coming right up!

You may already know this if you have me on Facebook and read my status from a few days ago. So if you are one of those people, sorry for making you think you had a new fecal update to read, but I'm sure there will be a new one forthcoming in the near future. There always is.

Eric has an enormous butthole. It's possibly the largest butthole in the entire world. I know this because we like to show each other our noteworthy poos, and Eric's poos are always EXTREMELY large. They look like bear poo, or zebra poo. When Eric was a child, he once made a poo so big it wouldn't go down the toilet. He had to furtively go outside and get a stick and break it up to make it flush away. I can't say for certain, but I'll bet a gay guy wouldn't feel much with Eric. Hot dog down a hallway. Eric won't let me test the theory though, because I've asked several times in our 8 years together and he refuses to allow me to experiment with inserting things into his cavernous tunnel. But I'll bet that with some lube I could easily get a can of Sprite in there.

A few days ago, Dylan shit in the shower. He has shit in the tub three times as mentioned in a previous post, but this time I was having a shower with him and he did in on the floor. There I was, shampooing my hair while he stood in front of me playing with a conditioner bottle and chatting to himself. I put some soap on my body puff and leaned over to lather him up, and I smelled it. A stinky warm poo scent.

I peeked over his head, and there below his little buttocks were two pieces of poo. Two ENORMOUS pieces of poo. At least, they were enormous for a little one-year-old toddler. They were at least the size of MY poos! I think I make some pretty standard poo. And this little kid of mine who is like, a fifth of my size, makes the same size poo. It boggles the mind. Does this mean that when he's my size, his poo will be FIVE TIMES as big as this?

Like father like son, I guess. We better get us some industrial toilets.

Ode to Garlic

I love roasting garlic. It's one of my new very favourite things to do. I buy six to eight heads of garlic, peel off as many outer layers of papery skin as possible, chop off the tops to expose the meaty pungent garlic, and bathe the entire head in olive oil. I then wrap each head lovingly in foil and roast it in the oven for 30-40 minutes.

The heads come out sweet and buttery and lovely. And then we eat them in a sensual orgy of oily delight.

It's excellent because now that we're new-age hippies, I'm all opposed to antibiotic drugs for sickness, and garlic is "nature's antibiotic". Roasting the garlic this way takes away the garlic-breath threat because slow-roasting it cooks away the compounds that make garlic a breathy nightmare. We eat it at least twice a week.

And I always roast extra so I have one or two heads leftever. I pop all the cloves out of the skins and mash them up with lots of extra virgin olive oil. I use this garlic puree for so many things!

For example:
- garnish on my salad for lunch the next day
- smeared on salmon filets with salt and pepper and then baked in the oven
- mixed in with canned salmon, eggs, green onion, parsley, and lemon juice and fried into garlic salmon fish cakes
- mixing with basil and parmigiano reggiano and tossing with whole grain pasta for Dylan
- using as a marinade for shrimp
- stuffing chicken breasts

I'm sure there are other uses. I just haven't found them all yet. Oh garlic. You are so fine and wonderful.

I will end with an ode in haiku form:
Don't ever leave me
Sweet and oily, so supple
Sliding down my throat

I don't think I'm doing it right

I don't get it with playgrounds. Now that the weather is warmer, I take Dylan to the park a lot to tire him out and to get him fresh air. I remember when I was a kid, parks used to be super fun and time would speed up while we were there. Now that I'm a mom, time SLOWS at the park.

We get there, and we go to the slides. I contort my body and twist out my neck trying to get both Dylan and myself to the tops of these playgrounds and we go down the big slides together. Dylan loves slides so he has a great time. We go back up maybe five times, playing with all the steering wheels and spinning attachments on the way up. We swoosh down with him giggling and loving it.

Then I take him to the swings and push him in the swing for a good long while, at least until he starts to look bored. I check my watch.

11 minutes have passed.

I'm convinced that the park I frequent sits on some kind of ripple in the space time continuum.

Updates! Updates! So Many Updates!!

Dylan is asleep. Let's do this.

I swear I have been meaning to blog over the last little while, and to prove it, I actually have three entries started in my list of posts. I just never got around to finishing them and putting them up. So!! To give you more to read, and to lessen the amount I need to write, I will copy and paste those entries into this post as a means of catching you up. Why work harder than I need to?

CRUISIN' March 31, 2009

I've been trying to write this post for weeks now. Dylan hasn't been sleeping well so that has taken away from my free time during his naps. Now that it's so late, you will be getting what's left in my head of what I can remember. Sorry.

We took Dylan on his first cruise in the middle of March. The trip also marked our first feature-length family vacation complete with Dylan's first time on an airplane.

We were nervous and excited for our first big family vacation so we stacked the deck by trying to convince all our friends to come.

Okay pause. If you didn't receive the email convincing you to come on this cruise, I amend my previous statement to say that we tried to convince only our friends who were most likely to come...to come. Of all those friends we contacted, only Luke and Cathy were cool enough to jump aboard. Everyone else was either renovating their basement, replacing computer equipment, being pregnant and too anxious to travel, saving up for a gay cruise instead, hanging out with their dog, busy with tax season, going on a cruise the MONTH BEFORE just because they're jerks, or just too lame. You know who you are.

So we went with Luke and Cathy, and it was totally awesome. Eric and I have never been known for light packing. We went to France and Spain for our honeymoon and packed over 80 kilos of luggage. We travelled to 5 different cities over 3 weeks and took several planes as well as one sweaty overnight train. We nearly died lugging that shit around.

Ever since then we have been actively working on reducing our travel baggage. It has not gone well. Having a baby didn't help matters, and to make a long story short, we packed three enormous suitcases, one large duffel, and three carry-on bags for this trip. We also travelled with a rented convertible carseat and a stroller. It was good times.

We were on Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas, which is their newest ship to date. It was enormous and ridiculous. It had everything you can think of that could be on a ship, and then some. Dylan was absolutely dumbfounded by what he saw! Little guy had never experienced such stimulation before! Watching him experience everything with his little one-year-old eyes was definitely the best part of the entire trip - but there were a few other memorable highlights.

Update: I then proceeded not to actually write any memorable highlights. I remember what most of them were though (see, cause they were memorable). My favourite one revolved around the fact that Cathy actually physically cannot stop talking. She is compelled by unknown forcese to fill almost every silence with a running commentary of anything that crosses her mind, like a constant vocal stream of consciousness. Like the Cylon Hybrid from Battlestar Galactica. It makes me very tired, but it's excellent for Dylan because she points out everything that is occuring in the world around us, which will either make him very aware and very smart with an early grasp of the English language, or intimidate him with the amount of talking he will assume the average human needs to do, and he will never speak due to the enormity of the challenge in front of him.

Secondly of course, I was going to write about all the food we ate. You can imagine how it all went down, and it was especially awesome because we had Dylan with us. I used him as an excuse to order TWO full three course meals every night. One was for me, and one was for Dylan. Like the night we both had escargots. He had two snails and I ate all the rest. Or if I couldn't decide between two entrees, I would just get them both. And then I would eat them both. And then get extra lobster tails. Three of them. I was really full that particular night.

And then I wanted to write about how much I love "Name That Tune", and it's pretty much a boring topic since it consisted mostly of how much I love "Name That Tune", and how I insisted that we attended every "Name That Tune" that took place on the ship...it's probably just as well that I didn't belabor that point cause it doesn't seem very interesting. But Name That Tune rocks, yo.

WHY WON'T YOU SLEEP? April 15, 2009

My baby sucks. I'm pretty sure it's all our fault (mine and Eric's, not yours), because we took him on a cruise in March and his sleep got all screwed up and has never gotten back to normal.

This is how bedtime USED to happen:
At 6:30, Dylan would get a bath. He loved his bath and splashed around happily. After his bath, he would get a foreskin pulldown, a fresh diaper, and jammies. Then we would read "Pirate", "Goodnight Gorilla", "Goodnight Moon", "Hug", and "I Love You Through and Through". Then I would hand him a pacifier, and he would drop his head down on my shoulder. I would snuggle him for maybe 8 seconds, and then place him down in the crib and zip him up in his Grobag, which is basically a sleeping bag for babies with shoulder straps. He would then turn his head to one side to play with the animals on his crib bumper, and I would leave him to it. He would put himself to sleep within ten minutes.

It would be 7:00pm. He would sleep until 7:00am. I would then congratulate myself on being a wonderful mother and proceed to have a quiet evening of watching tv, cleaning the kitchen, or entertaining friends. I would go to bed and get a good night's rest. Life was awesome.

This is how bedtime happens NOW:
At 6:30pm, he is wired. He refuses to take baths and instead loves showers. This means that one of us has to take his giant heavy little body and stand in the shower with him. We have to try to soap him up and get him cleaned up and rinsed off while holding him. He is a slippery little booger. Then we come out of the shower, freezing cold and wet. He gets a foreskin pulldown, a fresh diaper, and jammies.

We go to his room and try to read him books but he will have none of it. He stands up, walks to the bedroom door and bangs on it to be let out. So I dim the lights and give him a pacifier. He whips it at me angrily. I pick it up and put it down and go to sit with him in the glider chair. He freaks out and points at the pacifier. I give it to him and he slams it into his mouth and sucks angrily.

I rock him back and forth and he drops his head down on my shoulder. I try to put him down and he bucks his body and screams bloody murder. I sit back down and rock him. I sing to him. I sing to him and rock him until he's asleep. I stand up to put him down. He senses the change in altitude and screams bloody murder. I sit back down and rock him. I sing to him. I sing to him and rock him until he's asleep and snoring lightly. I stand up and place him down in the crib as gently as possible. If I'm lucky, he won't wake up.

I tiptoe out of the room. It is now 8:00pm. I am afraid to move around or watch tv or clean the kitchen in case the sounds wake him up. The kitchen grows mold.

At 10:00, he wakes up. He screams. He doesn't go back to sleep. I go to calm him down and he refuses to be calmed. He slides off my lap and run weeping to the bedroom door. He throws a huge tantrum. I take him outside his room and he smiles and runs around playing with his toys in the most adorable manner possible. He stays up playing happily and energetically until midnight. Eric then takes him to his room and rocks him to sleep. He falls asleep. Eric puts him down in his crib. He doesn't wake up. We go to bed. Eric and I start discussing the details of our death pact. It is 12:30am.

At 1:30am, he wakes up. He screams. He won't stop screaming. We get him and bring him into bed with us. He (no joke) sits up and quietly claps his hands while smiling. Then he snuggles in and goes to sleep. He sleeps like a performing acrobat. He takes up 80% of our king-size bed. I sleep way over on the edge of my side of the bed, Eric sleeps along the bottom edge of the bed. A large pillow ineffectually blocks Eric's side. If we do not do this, we get kicked repeatedly in various parts of our faces and anatomy. We all sleep like shit.

Dylan wakes up at 7:00am. He is a crabby and short-tempered child all goddamn day. Life sucks.

Yes, we're terrible parents. We're not being firm enough with him. But we have tried everything we can think of; he's gotten earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes, more naps during the day, fewer naps during the day, more activity during the day to tire him out, fewer activities during the day to keep him calm, more food to make sure he's full before going to bed, less food so he doesn't have indigestion, less spicy food so it doesn't bother him. He's been left to cry for hours on end, and all it did was make him unbearably clingy and needy for the following two days. We've brought him to bed with us right off the bat but he's too excited about it and flips all around like a deranged seal, and then inevitably gets bored and starts screaming bloody murder.

Update: This situation has not exactly improved, but we have found ways to work around it. I figure he can't be 15 years old and still sleeping in our bed, so I'm just going to roll with it. He naps better during the day and he'll at least sleep the night through as long as he's with us. Stop judging me.


OMG May 5, 2009
My mom and brother came over for dinner tonight. I made a roast organic chicken with organic chickpea salad and an organic green salad (we've gone organic crazy). Dylan finished eating first and started getting very cranky so Eric went to put him in the bath. Dylan recently likes baths again, so this calmed him down and he happily started playing with his bath toys.

My mom finished eating her dinner during this time, so she went to relieve Eric of bath duty so he could come out and finish eating his food. We were chatting with my brother Derek and generally having a pleasant time when my mom suddenly called out from the bathroom:

Mom: "Ai ya, Luy! A Jai Jai heung goh chung-leung-gong doe aw jaw mm mm!"

Translation: "Oh no, Carol! Dylan just shit in the tub!"

My brother and I gasped and ran over. Eric, not having understood the Chinese, sat bewildered at the dining room table chewing his organic salad.

Sure enough, Dylan stood in the tub with a large cloud of loose poo settling in the water behind him. All around him were his bath toys, floating in the poo water.

Update: Yeeah...that was disgusting. Even worse, he's done it two more times since then. Once he did it while Cathy and Luke were babysitting, so BIG apologies to them. This segues nicely into the following section!

Recent Updates (not prior drafts!):

Dylan is Gross
Our son is a disgusting boy. We don't know how he developed this habit, but for a few weeks now, he'll fart or burp and then laugh his gd head off. I mean yes, farts are kind of funny, but he LOVES it. I'm trying unsuccessfully to put a stop to it, but Eric is encouraging it. He's hoping Dylan will grow up to be that kid in class who laughs anytime anyone farts. One time, he was throwing an epic temper tantrum over...something totally inconsequential probably, and in the midst of his tossing and screaming, he accidentally let rip a loud and prolonged fart. And his screaming cries immediately changed to hysterical laughter.

Another time, he was in the bath and made a big echoing fart. He laughed, and since Eric was giving him the bath he also laughed to encourage this behaviour. Dylan decided to be a comedian and started making an effort to fart. He managed to push out a couple more, to great effect since his father is a depraved idiot but then it backfired. Dylan pushed too hard and shit in the tub. Haha Eric!! I was on my way out the door and I was all "Good luck! Bye!" I'm a good wife.

We've Maximized Our Living and Fixed Eric's Armpits
Somewhere along the way over the past year we've become new-age hippies. I don't know how this happened. It hasn't changed our spending habits or our penchant for designer goods we can barely afford, but we're suddenly all organic food and rock salt deodorant and grass-fed beef and non-toxic cleaning products.

It's all because of my friend BJ. I actually have a friend named BJ Hardick, no joke. He's a chiropractor in London and runs a practice with his dad. BJ has always been one of the most crazed and energetic people I knew, so back in university this made for good times. Most times I saw him he was drunk and awesome.

Now he's gone and taken all that energy and channeled it into his practice and a movement called Maximized Living. Eric and I decided to go check out one of his seminars and it changed the way we live. WE HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!!

But for serious, I started making the food changes he recommended and lost 12 pounds without even trying. I feel great and my skin is so nice I stopped wearing foundation and blush. And I can't wear my fat jeans anymore because they look baggy and awful. And this weekend I bought a dress at BCBG in a size 4. I'm so excited!

And we switched to this crystal deodorant because aluminum is all evil and sketchy. Eric's armpits are the armpits of death so I really did not believe that this was going to work. He applies deodorant twice a day just to try to control the stank and you can still smell the nastiness through the cloying perfume of his Axe antiperspirant. But no joke, Eric used this crystal rock deodorant on the FIRST DAY, and his armpits were fresh as daisies! I was appalled and amazed. I can press my face right up against his (somewhat damp) armpit at the end of a workday when he gets off the subway, and it has NO body odour smell at all! It's a miracle. Seriously go out and get one, if it can take away Eric's stank, it can probably make yours smell like pure gold.

Eric Likes Balls. Dylan Does, Too.
Have I ever blogged about how Eric likes balls? It started with Team America World Police. There's a scene where Greg The Actor goes undercover into a terrorist nest in Cairo and is brought before the terrorist leader. He says some bullshit about how he wants to be a terrorist too, and the leader says "I like you. You have balls. I like balls."

Eric and I love this line. Later on, there is a car chase scene through the Egyptian desert, and Greg accidentally makes some suggestion about blowing themselves up and the terrorist leader shouts "I LOVE YOUR BALLS!"

Eric loved these lines so much, he would try to work them into conversations, kind of like how you can say 'That what she said" and people know you're quoting The Office. The problem was, he would never commit fully enough to the line to make it evident that he was making a reference to something else, and not just being really creepy.

So we would be in a car with some friends, and someone would say something about balls. Like our friend Cathy, who is a phys-ed teacher would say, "and then the kids would put away the balls". And then Eric would kind of quietly and confidently state "I like balls" and then happily chuckle softly to himself. There would be a strange and awkward pause, and then the conversation would resume.

I had to have several talks with Eric to make him understand that people were going to think he was some kind of testicle pervert. So now he'll totally just shout "I LOVE YOUR BALLS!" but sometimes with minimal provocation. We may have gone too far in the opposite direction and ended up exactly where we started.

Anyway, the point of this is that I bought a thousand balls and dumped them into Dylan's playpen so now he has a ball pit in which to play. It's pretty awesome, and he loves it. Dylan loves balls.

Whew! That's all for now. Dylan should be waking up soon, but I am DONE this post! Wheee!!

Two Scoops

I've offered Dylan raisins for snacking several times, and he has not been a big fan. On the mornings when he has no oatmeal because I was too lazy to make it the night before, he gets to eat Eric's Dorset cereal. Eric says he always spits out the raisins. Similarly, when I try to get him to eat raisins as an afternoon snack, he grossly spits out the wet, partially masticated globs onto the area rug where it becomes camouflaged for days.

Last week in an attempt to make him stop fussing, I again offered him raisins. They were the PC Organics Jumbo Thompson Raisins, and they were truly enormous. Unlike their sticky SunMaid counterparts, these abominations were the size of the top joint of my pinky finger.

On this day, Dylan finally decided he liked raisins. He gobbled them down like a little glutton! Then he pointed at the now-empty little raisin box while making his trademark frantic grunting noise. I obliged by getting him another little box of raisins. He hoovered those down as well.

In total, he ate 8 boxes of raisins. That is a lot of raisins. It was probably a really bad idea to let him eat that many raisins, but I was sickly fascinated to see how many boxes of raisins he would actually consume. The answer was 8 boxes.

The next day, he pooped four times. Each of those four times he pooped not piles of raisins, but GRAPES! He must have been swallowing raisins mostly whole, and they reconstituted in his digestive tract to their original grape form.

It was every bit as gross as it sounds, diapers full of soft plump grapes nestled in a loose matrix of poo, some grapes flattened and stuck against his little buttocks. It kinds of creeps me out just talking about it.

I will end with a spontaneous haiku:
I saw you piled there
A grotesque perversion of
The circle of life

I'm An Awesome Jerk

We finally got our greedy paws on a Wii Fit!

To be honest, I wasn't that excited about Wii Fit. I didn't understand the hype. Why would anyone want to ruin a delightful passtime like videogaming by throwing in gross exercise? Isn't it enough that I wiggle my thumb and click buttons simultaneously?

But I'm so chunky I'm practically a rectangle. Starting in the new year, I have been trying to get my body to stop looking so blockish. I have been going to the gym every other day, and I have kept my eye out for a Wii Fit. I heard those stories about those people who lost 20lbs playing Wii Fit. I wanted to be one of those people.

Yesterday I went to visit my parents, and my mom and I went to the mall. While walking past Toys R' Us, I saw a little girl struggle by, hauling a slim box with a handle. I saw that it was a Wii Fit. So I punched that little girl in the mouth and ran off with her Wii Fit. I could hear her crying and screaming, but I made it to my car and drove away.

After dropping the game off at my parents' house, I called my mom on her cell phone and went back to the mall to pick up her and Dylan.

Okay no, that didn't happen. But I did dart into Toy R' Us and ask if they had any Wii Fits in stock. And when I saw that they did, I bought one. Yes!!!

I have been playing Wii Fit in almost every spare moment since then (I took a break this morning to dig up my turnip and sell it in Animal Crossing - good times). I love the Balance Games! I am awesome at them. By "awesome" I mean "way better than Eric".

Tonight I finally went to try the Soccer Balance Game. You have to shift your weight from side to side in order to hit soccer balls with your head while avoiding cleats and beheaded panda mascots. I recalled that Eric had proclaimed this game to be "difficult" and "tricky". His high score was 99. I started playing and it was indeed tricky. I found the hardest part was hitting the balls that came at you right near the middle (that's what she said). But after a couple of tries I was getting scores that were over three times higher than Eric's!

He came out to see how I was doing and was impressed and awed by my soccer ball hitting prowess. He encouraged me and cheered me on. But this was not enough for me.

Carol: "Do you want to try?"

Eric: "No it's okay. I'm going to call Chris, I have to talk to him about some work stuff."

Carol: "Come on, come try! Here, I'll set it up for you..."

Eric: "No, really. Maybe later."

Carol: "Come now! I want you to try and then be really bad so I feel even MORE awesome!"

Eric: "...that's why you want me to try?"

Carol: "HERE YOU GO, IT'S ALL READY!!"

And so Eric tried. And he did much better than his original high score of 99. But even so, his "Personal Best" didn't rank in the top ten.

Carol: "Oh boy. Eric, GOOD FOR YOU. A new 'Personal Best'. Gosh, too bad it's still not even as good as my worst score. HAHA!!!! LOSER!!!!"

I am a beautiful person.


*********
UPDATE:
*********
After writing this blog post, I went and kept playing the soccer game on the beginner level, and after a few tries I got a PERFECT SCORE! I hit every single soccer ball and avoided every cleat and panda head!! This results in a score of 555. I SO TOTALLY ROCK!!

Dylan is a Hungry Hungry Hippo

Earlier this week I woke up all groggy to the sound of Dylan complaining his head off from his room. It sounded something like "I have been lying here for a long time woman, when are you coming to get me?" So I got out of bed and allowed him to keep bitching while I went pee, brushed my teeth, and went to the kitchen to heat up his breakfast of organic oatmeal with apples, cinnamon, and ground chia seeds.

Sidebar: Remember Chia Pets (Ch-ch-ch-chia!)? Turns out the seeds that served as their nutrient source are like the most nutrient-rich whole food on the entire planet. Aztecs used to survive on chia seeds when they went on...big hunting camping trips? I can't remember the actual quote. But you can get them at health food stores and we sprinkle it on as much of Dylan's food as we can get away with.

So while I was in the kitchen I noticed that two cereal bowls were rinsed and sitting by the sink. Weird, cause why did Eric use two cereal bowls? Then I thought there was considerably less oatmeal in the container than I had expected. Weird, cause I thought I had just made that batch two days ago? Then after everything was heated up I filled a sippy cup with water and took everything out to set up on the table. And sitting on the table was a sippy cup all filled and ready to go. Weird, cause did Eric put that there? In preparation for me?

I went to get Dylan and he was in a good mood. We snuggled and said good morning to his favourite stuffed animals. Then I brought him out to the dining room and suddenly it occured to me that maybe Eric had already gotten up and fed him once this morning. Two cereal bowls, less oatmeal than expected in the container, and a prepared sippy cup! I called Eric and sure enough I was so zonked out that I had no idea he had gotten up with Dylan much earlier, fed him, changed him, played with him, and put him back down for a nap. Huh.

Anyway, that heated bowl of oatmeal went back in the fridge - I wasn't going to feed it to Dylan again but Eric can eat garbage out of a toilet and still not get sick, so he could have it the following morning. When I told him this, he got very excited because he lives for Dylan's delicious organic leftover scraps.

So the next morning, father and son woke up together and each had a big bowl of oatmeal with apples, cinnamon, and ground chia seeds. Eric was horrified at how filling Dylan's breakfast is. Ground chia seeds have a lot of insoluble fibre so they fill you up fast and keep you feeling full. And we load in as much as the oatmeal can hold without turning into sawdust paste. Eric felt almost uncomfortably full after eating that bowl of oatmeal. Dylan felt fine and still wanted to share my granola cereal.

That same day, as another example, Dylan and I had lunch.

I ate:
- 2 extra large scrambled eggs
- 1 piece of dry flax toast

I felt bloated afterwards.

Dylan ate:
- 2 extra large scrambled eggs
- 1 piece of dry flax toast
- 1/4 avocado
- 1 banana

He then tried to bully me into making him more eggs. When I refused, he lay on his stomach and dragged himself around the ground for exercise.

Who are the medical professionals out there? What are the chances Dylan has some kind of...I don't know thyroid problem? What controls appetite?

You can imagine how happy he makes my Chinese relatives.

Life Update

Dylan is sleeping and is due to wake up any minute. This is of course the best time to start an all-purpose update blog post. I'm practically inviting failure and there is a good chance you will never see this posted.

I Have No Husband
Well no, technically I still do. But ever since going back to work in the new year, Eric has been working some extreme hours. He goes to work at a normal time most mornings, but stays at the office until 2 or 3 in the morning. Then he stumbles home, catches a few hours of sleep, then gets up to feed Dylan so he at least still knows he has a father, then goes off to work again.

There is a medium-to-good chance that Eric is having an affair. It would not be surprising for Eric to be this bad at having an affair that he just claims he's working late until 2 or 3 every night, but is actually in the arms of his clandestine lover. I keep trying to catch him in a lie, but he is actually pretty consistent with his story. I don't blame him for staying consistent because he knows that if he is caught in an affair, his balls will be ripped off and liquified in a blender and then force-fed back to him. So you know. Let me know if you have any information. I'm too lazy to do anything about it.

Dylan is a Monster Tank
He is so big. My little wee baby is gone forever and in its place is a chunky block of muscle and chub. He still can't walk independently but he insists on holding onto our fingers and charging around everywhere. And he poops like an absolute machine!

And recently, he has made a hysterical game out of flipping over onto his stomach anytime you want to change his diaper. I know he thinks it's hilarious because he looks at me first and starts cackling like a wicked witch, then arches his back and rolls over onto his stomach. And then he looks at me again and continues to cackle. And when you try to flip him back over, he laughs and resists and kicks his feet like he's dancing.

It's all fine and good as long as it's a pee diaper. It's annoying because it takes forever to get the new diaper on him and the whole time I'm in fear of him spraying pee everywhere. But when it's a poo diaper, it's just disgusting. The potential is high for stinky poo to get everywhere. I've started to change him on the floor when it's a poo diaper and I push one of my legs across his torso to forcefully pin him down. As he gasps for air and moans in pain, I feel there must be a better way to do this. So you know. Let me know if you can think of anything. I'm too stupid now to innovate ideas.

I Love Shameful TV
Ever since Eric started working these late night, I have become increasingly dependent on trashy television. It all started on the season premiere of The Bachelor on a Monday night. Eric was working late and Dylan had gone down to sleep at his customary 7pm, and there was nothing for me to do after eating my dinner. So I turned on the TV and started flipping through channels. The Bachelor caught my eye as I was surfing. All the girls were filing out of a limo and introducing themselves to Jason Mesnick. I wanted to check out the group of desperate bimbos, so I started watching. I was all casual and saracastic about it, and I ended up watching the entire episode. I made fun of the trailer they tacked on at the end promising scandal and intrigue for the remainder of the season. I was not pathetic.

The following Monday, Eric was again working late, so I flipped on the TV and saw that The Bachelor was on. "Oh," methinks to myself. "Look at that. I may as well tune in to see what those wacky girls are up to."

By the third Monday, I was eagerly awaiting 8:00 and the two-hour extravaganza of awesomeness that is The Bachelor.

This week, I just sucked it up and dove into not only The Bachelor, but also all iterations of American Idol, and topped it off with an episode of "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" and then "Pregnant and Paralyzed" on TLC.

It's the beginning of 2009 and I am once again TV's bitch. So you know. Let me know if you are addicted to any other good trashy shows. I'm too strung out on these shows to look for new ones.

My Eyeball Was Injured
My left eye had been bothering me for a few months. If you hang out with me often, you will likely recall moments when I would put my hand up to my eye and complain of a stinging sensation, followed by a run to the washroom to take out my contact lens to clean it. I may have also asked Eric to blow in my eye.

I finally went to the eye doctor and he looked at my eyeball. Turns out something had gotten under my contact lens some time ago and scraped off a section of my cornea. I'm pretty sure it happened in Cuba. Possibly with sand. I had to stop wearing my contact lenses and wear glasses for a few days while it healed.

This story really isn't that interesting, I just really get annoyed with having to wear my glasses for such a long period of time. Glasses suck. So you know. Whatever.

And on that note, I will end with a spontaneous rhyming couplet:
If Eric cheats his balls I will destroy
And lack of sperm will not be due to soy

"IT WAS YOU!!"

Dylan has major gas today. I think he might be a little bit sick, because his head feels warmer than usual, his appetite is strangely small, and he's been gulping water at a shocking pace.

His farts smell like rotten eggs. Which, I know that's what farts are supposed to smell like. Everyone says that farts smell like eggs, eggs smell like farts...I used to make egg salad in Kingston while Gloria was in class and when she got back she'd know I had been making egg salad because it smelled like I had held a large choir practice in the apartment but instead of practising songs, everyone had farted and left. But Dylan's farts today really DID smell like rotten eggs, like I detected distinct notes of poached egg white. And he hadn't eaten any poached egg white at all, in fact, he had spat out all of his delicious kale, onion, and cherry tomato omelette which I ended up eating, including the ABC pieces he spat out.

Sidebar: I have never eaten so much ABC food as I have in the past 4 or 5 months since Dylan started solids. I'm like a dog. A really flabby, non-hairy dog with stretchmarks.

He farted all throughout the day, the same flavour each time. Late in the afternoon, I heaved him into my arms and went down to the parking garage to get something from the car. And he FARTED IN THE ELEVATOR. It was completely gross. I was so scared someone would be waiting for the elevator down in P2 and think that I had made that smell. Do I blame the baby? It seemed not only cruel, but also not very believable. If it were me, I would not believe that a small innocent baby would be able to make a smell so potent. I don't think I've smelled anything like that since my first trimester when my poo was backed up and came out extra fermented.

Luckily, there was no one down there, and we went to the car and got what we needed. Dylan thought that being taken down to the cold parking garage in his pyjamas was a hoot. He started giggling once we were in the parking area and was happily pointing at everything. Totally cute.

Of course, we were lucky to get the SAME ELEVATOR going back up. And when I walked inside, the fart was STILL THERE. So not only was Dylan's fart thick and potent, it had longevity. It smelled as though the atmosphere in the elevator were a vacuum and the fart had been perfectly preserved.

But here's the thing: I don't think Dylan knows he's the one making these farts. A little later, I was feeding him his dinner. We were sitting there at the dining room table, and he was feeding himself pieces of curry tofu and he let one rip. It burst out in a thick cloud of stench.

I turned to give him a strained look. And found that he was giving me a strained look. That's right, he was looking at me as though I had just farted. And then he lifted his little arm and pointed a finger at me. I started shaking my head vehemently, "NO baby, NO! It was you! IT WAS YOU!!!" And he started shaking his head, and continued to point!

So either my 10-month-old baby can't tell when he's farting or he knows how to fart and then blame it on his mother. I really hope he doesn't do this in public.

Uncle Luke is literal; awesome

We spent the weekend at Niagara Falls with Luke and Cathy. Luke and Cathy are beyond fantastic with Dylan, and I'm not just writing that because I know that Cathy reads my blog (hi Cathy). Dylan promptly loses his mind from excitement every time he sees them and not surprisingly - they have endless patience and attention for him, and we see them every week so he probably thinks we're related to them. Like maybe they're his other parents.

Cathy is a high school teacher and overachiever. The downside of this is that she enjoys being correct way too much, but the upside is that she is excellent at turning most interactions into learning opportunities for Dylan. Luke works at a nuclear power plant and is extremely smart. He also loves technology and is kind of a dork in that cool successful way.

There was a nice Christmas tree still up in the lobby of the hotel, and while I dumped my child off with Cathy and Luke to go poke around in the gift shop, they took him to see the Christmas tree.

This was the easy-to-understand lesson that Cathy gave:

Cathy: Look Dylan! Look at the tree. This is an acorn. A-CORN.

Dylan: (pointing) Da.

Cathy: What's this Dylan? It's a cranberry. CRAN-BERRY.

Dylan: (pointing) Da.

Then Luke joined in to impart some knowledge of his own:

Luke: Hey Dylan, look at this (points to LED Christmas light). LIGHT E-MITT-ING DI-ODE.

Cathy: Okay, lesson's over.

Oh no.

Happy Holidays everybody!! It's the day after New Year. Our Christmas celebrations went off normal - lots of family and not enough sleep. Dylan was spoiled completely rotten and now we're trying to find places in the condo for all his prezzies.

Earlier this week our halfie environmentalist accountant friend Rob came from Ottawa to visit with his new wife Amanda. Amanda is great because she openly talks about poo and other bodily secretions, as well as all gooey things related to pregnancy and childbirth. They are the most excited out of anyone I've ever known to procreate. She's been charting her cycles "for fun" and playing with her vag goo for a few weeks lately to try to learn when and how her body responds when it is ovulating. We talked about these things over dinner, as well as a few VERY revealing private stories regarding stomach flu and all that comes with it. Suffice it to say, Rob loves Amanda very very much and has proved it beyond any shred of real or imagined doubt. Good on ya, Rob.

In return, I had very few stories to offer up. All my "scandalous" and "embarrassing" stories had already been told and rehashed several times. There's only so many times that Eric can puke in my mouth. I felt very inadequate. I mentioned how I once popped Eric's freak-occurance butt-zit. But Amanda had popped a zit Rob had on the underside of his thigh, so it was almost the same thing. Sad times for attention-hungry Carol.

That night, my body decided to give me some more ammunition. It wanted to help me out and get me back in the game. We were up late playing board games before Rob and Amanda left, and it took us a little while to get to bed. By the time we fell asleep we were completely exhausted and slept the sleep of the nearly dead. In my dreams, I did many things including going to Costco with my mother and playing with Dylan. Several times, I dreamt I went to the kitchen to pee in the dishwasher. During one of those dream trips, I peed for a long time. There was a lot of pee going into that dishwasher, I couldn't stop.

I woke up and I had wet the bed.

I PEED THE BED.

My pants were hot and sopping wet, clinging to my ass. The sheets were soaked. I, a grown woman, a mother of one, a practitioner of good personal hygiene, had lost control of my bladder and released its contents in my sleep.

I woke Eric up and he changed the sheets while I got in the shower to clean off my peed-on body.

It's so embarrassing. Happy New Year everyone.

Dylan and the Reverse Gay Poo Boner

On Saturday, Dylan ate a ton of food, as per usual. For breakfast he ate some apple cinnamon oatmeal and plain yogurt with 10% milk fat. For lunch he ate an omelette with kale and green onions and a bowl of blueberries and strawberries. And for dinner he ate 1/4 pound of dijon baked salmon, a head of broccoli, a kiwi fruit, 8 blackberries, and a bit of egg from a shrimp dish my mom made.

He then proceeded not to poo for nearly 24 hours. Eric and I were becoming a little concerned because we knew how much stuff was backed up in there. Luckily, around dinnertime last night as I was preparing Dylan's repast of yet more salmon, this time with green beans and peppers, Eric galloped past the kitchen on his way to Dylan's room with the baby held aloft triumphantly in his arms proclaiming happily, "He made a stinky! He made a stinky!!"

A few seconds ticked by, and then Eric called out to me excitedly, "Carol! You have to come see this poo!!" So I dropped what I was doing and ran over. I love looking at poo.

Dylan was lying on the change table gumming a teething toy. Eric pointed at Dylan's diaper which had not yet been taken off. And there, rising majestically out of his butt was a great protruberance. It tented his diaper. It looked like a boner. Except it was made of poo. And it was from the butt...and was coming out of it instead of going in. I immediately christened it the Reverse Gay Poo Boner.

I'm pretty sure this means Dylan needs more fluids.

Glutton in Training - A Short Diatribe

Dylan eats like a starving animal. I know that babies go through growth spurts and maybe 10 months is just one of those times. But I think it's ridiculous.

Yesterday for lunch he ate:

- an omelette made from 1 organic egg, a big handful of organic kale, 1 organic cremini mushroom and 1 stalk of organic green onion
- 1/2 a supermarket 1/2-pint container of organic raspberries
- 1 organic kiwi fruit
- 1/4 organic avocado

But since we were at a restaurant, his eyes wandered over to our food, so he also ate:

- the squishy inside of 1 wedge of a giant green-onion-sesame-seed-fried-cake thing
- 3 pieces of very spicy beef brisket

This sort of eating is a regular occurance. When we go to dim sum restaurants, you can see his mouth watering as the food comes to the table, and then he shrieks like he's frantic we're not going to give him any, and then he hoovers it down like a tortured prisoner. At dim sum, he likes to eat:

- the beefy insides of the beef noodle roll
- steamed BBQ pork buns - the whole thing, including the BBQ pork
- steamed chicken and mushroom buns - the whole thing including the chicken and mushroom
- panfried turnip cakes
- steamed beefy balls
- siu mai (steamed pork and shrimp dumplings)
- bean curd rolls with mushrooms and other vegetarian stuff inside
- chicken and shitake mushrooms in a rice hot pot
- congee, any kind

He also loves all berries and fruit. Thank god his digestive system has improved, and he breaks down his food more before he poops it out. For the longest time, blueberries were his favourite fruit, but the poo came out smelling like delicious blueberry muffins. It was horrible, I can't stand the smell of real blueberry muffins anymore. I also can't stand the smell of blueberry or mixed berry yogurt. It's all poo to me.

I look into the future of this child and I see obesity. Obesity and joy.

I have this zit

We have a wedding to go to in Ottawa this Saturday and I have this really bad zit. I am not 14 years old. I am way older than that (28) and I haven't had a bad zit for years and years. What is this??

It's in a really bad place, on the left side of my face (as in, on the same side as my personal left hand, which is opposite from the left side of my face as seen by you), about a centimetre diagonally above the corner of my mouth. It started a few days ago as a hard and painful underground bump. I poked it a bit and massaged it curiously and hoped it would go away. But over the past few days it has been surfacing and becoming red and swollen. I had Eric touch it yesterday and he exclaimed in surprise at the heat of the pink zit bump. It is still not a full-fledged zit, but more like a small pointy mountainous mosquito bite. I am afraid that by Saturday it will have matured into a mighty whitehead, and I will have to pop it. And then the skin will be broken and will not look right even with concealer and make-up, because the surface will be all scraggy. Plus I will have to keep on RE-popping it, because it will continue to refill itself with pus and blood and fluid.

It reminds me of this time I had a huge underground zit for about two months on the left side of my face near the top of my cheekbone. This is a really long story, and just thinking of it makes me so excited I get exhausted, so suffice it to say, it eventually erupted into a mighty whitehead which I popped every night for four nights. It was a veritable zit-shaped cornucopia of pus. It kept on refilling, and each subsequent night yielded greater and greater volumes of pus and blood. Finally, on the last fateful night of the life of this zit, I did the usual pop, and gobs of pus ran out, followed by rivulets of blood. I collected all this waste on a piece of tissue and clambered up onto our bed to show Eric, who reacted with dutiful horror and disgust. Then I went back to the bathroom to continue playing with the zit for awhile, mainly to continue squeezing blood out of it until I got bored. I placed a finger on either side of the still prevalent lump, and pushed inward and downward. What I'm about to tell you will sound like an exaggeration. Admittedly, I sometimes exaggerate on the blog for shock effect, but - and I can't stress this enough - this is not one of those times. This is 100% accurate with no embellishments.

Okay.

So I placed a finger on either side of the still prevalent lump and pushed inward and downward. And a large hole about the size of the tip of a medium ball-point pen opened up at the apex of the zit lump, and a semi-solid substance ERUPTED from this hole in almost the exact manner of silly string. It wasn't gooey drippy pus. It wasn't blood. It was white, and it came out in a strip, like Play-Doh squeezed out of the spaghetti maker. Recall, this zit was at the top of my left cheekbone. This column of pus shot out perpendicular to my person and then fell with the natural force of gravity down against my face. It hung down a FULL INCH. It was completely disgusting and completely beautiful. If you don't believe me, you can verify my story with Eric because, of course, the next thing I did was clamber back up onto the bed to show him. He couldn't believe his eyes. He still talks about it to this day.

After much oh-my-godding and holy-christing I wiped it off and squeezed a few more times to clear it out completely. And suddenly, the lump was entirely and utterly deflated. It lay totally flat. This underground hard lumpy tumour of a zit that had been with me for over two months was just gone. It was hands down the most incredible zit experience of my life.

I do have another hard lump in a place similar to the insane zit, and it has been there since before Dylan was born. I told Eric about it the other day and he does not believe me. But I am not lying, this lump has been in my face since before I gave birth. If you want to feel it, I will let you. I've been waiting for it to erupt the same way, but as each month passes I am disappointed. I feel that insane zit was truly a once-in-a-lifetime zit.

But this painful, hot, red bump on my face right now, I don't know what will happen with it. But I'm not happy. I think I'll go to the washroom now and play with it a bit.

Carol and Carols

I'm getting anal for Christmas. Whoa wait, let me clarify. I am not getting penetrated in the butt by an erect penis as a holiday gift (Eric: "Boo"). What I mean is that I am starting to get excitedly anxious about the holiday season, and am worried that I won't get anything done in time and will have to battle through the crush of holiday shoppers with my screaming child in order to buy thoughtful and appropriate gifts for everyone on my list. As a result, I have an Excel spreadsheet all typed out with the people for whom I must purchase gifts, and the possible gift ideas listed in the column next to their names. And I am planning on ticking those gifts off the list a few at a time over the next two weeks. I am on an uber efficient holiday shopping spree!

As a result of this, I have also moved up the annual playing of holiday music. I keep checking radio stations in the car to see if anyone is playing holiday music yet (they're not), and yesterday I searched for "Christmas" in my iTunes and created a playlist of all the songs that came out of that search and re-synched my iPod and put it back on the iPod docking station. And today, I decided it was time to start brainwashing Dylan with Christmas music. So instead of the usual mix of Disney songs and girly pop music I make him listen to, I put on the Christmas playlist and sat down with him to play with his toys.

The first song that came on was "Where are You Christmas" by Faith Hill. Slow, moving, beautiful music with cheesy stupid lyrics. I love this song! Christmas was off to a great start!

Then came another favourite, "All I Want for Christmas Is You", by Mariah Carey. I so can't get enough of this song. It makes me want to dance! So that's what I did, I picked up Dylan and we boogied all over the condo. Good times were had by all.

Then "Santa Baby" by Madonna. Hmm, I thought to myself. This song is pretty skanky. But you can't deny "Santa Baby", after all it's a classic.

Then came Britney's "Santa Can You Hear Me". I had a cringe moment; I didn't want Dylan listening to this. And then I had an introspective moment. I have never been a huge Britney fan, but I can't deny that her past music is catchy. While I have always turned my nose up at the low quality of her offerings, I am now at a point where I feel I can admit that she was culturally one of the voices of my generation. She is approximately my age, and her music managed to permeate most of the years of my youth when I felt that the world was at my feet and I would be young and awesome forever. My friend Jordan even wrote a shout-out to her in his graduating blurb of our yearbook. When I hear her warbling nasal voice, I am sent hurtling back into that bubble in my life: full of doubt and confidence, full of fear and hope. Secure and happy and clueless. And while it's true that Britney has been a complete mess for a few years, she's looking pretty hot again now, and has that "surprisingly candid" interview with MTV so...maybe she's okay again? Anyway, I decided to let go of my prejudices and to embrace this song, and so Dylan and I danced as Brit implored Santa for a man, promising that this was her only wish this year.

Then came a really stuffy operatic version of "Still Still Still" by the Cambridge Singers. Yeah, I have totally dorky music.

And then, unfortunately, Mr Garrison's voice came on the speakers:
I heard there is no Christmas in the silly Middle East
No trees, no snow, no Santa Claus, they have different religious beliefs
They believe in Muhammad, and not in our holiday
And so every December I go to the Middle East and say...

"Hey there Mr. Muslim Merry fucking Christmas
Put down that book the Koran, and hear some holiday wishes.
In case you haven't noticed it's Jesus's birthday.
So get off your heathen Muslim ass and fucking celebrate!"

Too late I remembered my extensive collection of South Park holiday songs. I snuck a glance at Dylan and he was looking at me curiously. I decided that not to react would be the best thing, so I pretended to play with a plastic giraffe. Unfortunately, by the time Mr Garrison got to this part:
"Hey there Mr. Shintoist Merry fucking Christmas
God is going to kick your ass you infidelic pagan scum"
Dylan had decided he liked the song and was bopping to the beat and waving his arms. My baby could be a racist.

Of course right after this, we got "Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo":
Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo
Small and brown he comes from you
Sit on the toilet here he comes
Squeeze him 'tween your festive buns

A present from down below
Spreading joy with a "Howdy-Ho!"
He's seen the love inside of you
`Cause he's a piece of poo

And it didn't end there. We also sat through "Lonely Jew on Christmas", "Swiss Colony Beef Log", and "The Most Offensive Song Ever" which is about how Mary can suck all the dick she wants and still be a virgin. Luckily, Kenny sings most of the worst parts so it's mumbled. But I think Dylan could tell it was very dirty.

I will end with a haiku to Santa Claus:
Santa are you there?
Keep Dylan from Children's Aid
I'll get new music

Cheeeeeeeeeeeeese

I've been thinking: it's time I wrote a blog post about cheese that is not of the dick variety. I love cheese but not all cheese and, this is important, not all cheese in all ways.

Here for your perusal is a brief list of my cheese preferences:

1. I like Black Diamond marble cheese, but never ever Cracker Barrel. It is too creamy.
   
2. I don't like Black Diamond marble cheese if it has come to room temperature
3. I like Black Diamond mild cheddar, but never medium or old, and again never ever Cracker Barrel. Ditto goes for the temperature point above.
4. I don't like cream cheese. I will not eat it on bagels, in spreads, in cold dips, or rolled with smoked salmon.
5. I like cream cheese in hot crab/lobster dip
   
6. I like cream cheese in cheesecakes
7. I don't like Japanese cheesecakes
8. I like mozzarella on pizza, lasagna, panini, and most baked casserole dishes.
9. I do not like mozzarella cold or eaten on its own.
10. I like mozzarella cold if it is buffalo mozzarella and served in a caprese salad.
11. I no longer like cheese in my subs.
12. I don't like cheese in my salads.
13. I don't mind some cheese in my salad at St. Louis Wings.
14. I like real cheese melted on nachos.
15. I hate liquid squirtable/dippable cheese on nachos.
16. I don't like Parmesan cheese on top of pasta.
17. I like Parmesan cheese in pesto.
18. I do not like Parmesan cheese (or any other kind of cheese) in tomato sauces
    
19. I am starting to like Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, but mostly baked inconspicuously into lasagna, preferably mixed with mozzarella and breadcrumbs.
20. I don't like fettucine alfredo.
21. I have historically not liked feta, but I am starting to work on it. I like feta on some gourmet pizzas. I have also not historically liked feta in my Greek salad, but am starting to get it on the side so I can try it. I do not like spanikopita.
22. I don't like goat cheese, and don't expect I ever will. It tastes like goat.
23. I don't like swiss cheeses like Emmental or Gruyere. I also don't like Jarlsberg, though I'm not sure if that's swiss or not. It follows that I don't like cheese fondue or quiche. Both really gross me out.
24. I don't like cottage cheese.
25. I like ricotta in pasta.
    
26. I like brie and Camembert - a lot.
27. I don't like brie and Camembert from a supermarket. I call these varieties Supermarket Brie and Supermarket Camembert. My fancy soft cheeses must be unpasteurized and/or come from a fancy cheese shop, and be either from Quebec or France. It must be strong but not so strong that it is bitter. I eat these spread thinly on good french bread, like fancy butter.
28. I don't mind Supermarket Brie or Supermarket Camembert, if it is served with flavourful crackers that mask the plastic supermarket flavour. I eat these spread mediumly on said crackers.
    
29. It is likely that I also do not mind Supermarket Brie and Supermarket Camembert if it is covered with a bunch of flavourful stuff and then baked. This theory has not yet been tested.
30. I tentatively and cautiously like blue cheese. But definitely not all blue cheese. I like St Agur blue cheese, and this must be spread very lightly. I do not like the Danish Rosenborg cheese from the supermarket. I call this Stinky Supermarket Blue. I liked a blue cheese from an oyster restaurant downtown called Starfish (the restaurant, not the cheese). This leads me to believe that I may also like other varieties of blue cheese.
    
31. I love love love Morbier cheese from France. It has a thin streak of black ash across the middle. It smells like the feet of angels. It is earthy and a little nutty and I love love love it.

AND FINALLY:
As of last night, I am obsessed with Tete de Moine cheese. This is the main reason for this post. Tete de Moine cheese (or Monk's Head cheese) is made in Switzerland, and is a noble and generous gift from the cheese gods who live in their heavenly Mount Cheesympus. To serve it, you scrape at it on an angle with a tool called a "girolle", and it forms a flowery buttery bundle of delicious awesomeness. You can then gobble it up plain, or dollop some jelly into the curling folds of the luscious cone.

I sampled this cheese at the Gourmet Wine and Cheese Show last night. It was the night reserved for insider people; it turns out one of my Mommy Friends has mad hook-ups and got us all in for free. Together, we experienced this cheese and it changed my life forever. I can't wait to get out to a fancy cheese shop, because I am SO going to get me some Monk Heady goodness! If you come over to visit over the holidays, I will share it with you.Haiku Finale:
Mother cow and sheep
Creamy cheese flows forth from teat
Not literally

Motherhood is neat

I've been trying to train Dylan to sleep good. I put him down in his crib while he's still awake, and I tuck him in, make sure he's warm, make sure he's not too warm, make sure there are no plastic bags in the immediate vicinity, and then I walk away. If I've timed it just right, he will quietly put himself to sleep and nap for 1-2 hours. If I've mistimed it a little, and he still has some energy, he'll lie in bed and talk to himself for a few minutes, then put himself to sleep. If he's been a little overexcited, he'll yell and bitch for about 20 seconds while I put him down, and then realize he's tired and figure "Meh, it's not worth the hassle of throwing a tantrum", and put himself to sleep shortly after. But if I've done something really unfortunate, like go out to the mall and force him to stay awake and stimulated for way longer than I should have, he will NOT go to sleep. Not for anything, not for anyone. And he will just continue to get more and more tired, and he will be miserable, and I will be miserable, and by the time Eric gets home, we're both pissed and miserable, and then he has to deal with TWO bitchy treats. Haha.

To avoid this, I have resorted to getting Dylan to sleep using any means necessary. I don't mean that I drug his blueberries, but I will take him into our bedroom and snuggle, massage, and sing him to sleep in our bed. And I will hold him and nap with him in order to keep him asleep. It's usually pretty uncomfortable, but it's also extremely priceless and wonderful. I love snuggling my little baby and hearing his little baby breaths and being able to kiss him as much as I want while he's unconscious. Yes, I'm a sappy sappy mommy.

As he got a little bigger, he started to roll onto his side to sleep, especially when he was overexhausted. When he's in bed with us, he almost always rolls toward one of us, and reaches out with his little hands to hold onto us while he sleeps. It's really freaking adorable.

A couple weeks ago, this last scenario took place. He was overtired and very unhappy. He wanted to sleep, but he didn't want to sleep. So I brought him into bed with me, and snuggled and shushed him, and eventually he rolled towards me, reaching out with his chubby little paws to hold onto my hair and my face. We fell awesomely asleep like that and napped for about a half an hour.

I was awoken by a strange prodding sensation...in my nose. It took me a couple seconds to realize what was happening, but yes I woke up to Dylan gently picking my nose with his fingers. I'm excited to tell this story at his wedding, too. I need to start keeping a list.